Albrightsville man sentenced in child sex assault

As his young victim sat silent in the back of the courtroom, an Albrightsville man spoke via video from a federal prison.

“I understand my actions caused extreme hurt. I’m sorry for what I’ve done and for the choices I’ve made,” Grant G. Harris said before he was sentenced on a charge of indecent assault of a person under age 13.

Harris was speaking from an administrative security federal medical center in Butner, North Carolina, where he’s two years into a 16½-year sentence for taking pornographic photos of his victim, whom he repeatedly assaulted beginning when she was 8 years old.

Harris assaulted the girl between January 2008 and December 2012.

The charges were filed by state troopers in July 2015, but the case was delayed in the county court due to then-pending federal charges of child pornography.

On Thursday, Carbon County Judge Joseph J. Matika sentenced Harris, 39, to three to 10 years on the indecent assault charge.

The sentence will run concurrently, or at the same time, as the 16½-year federal sentence Harris is currently serving on the child pornography charges.

Assistant District Attorney Joseph D. Perilli accepted defense attorney Matthew J. Rapa’s request for the concurrent sentence.

Harris is required to serve the entire 16½ years. As a Tier 3 sex offender, Harris upon release will have to register with authorities for the rest of his life under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act.

He is to have no contact with his victim, and upon release, no contact with anyone under age 18, followed by 15 years of federal supervision.

Rapa said his client is getting treatment in prison.

“He’ll be there for a long, long time,” he told Matika.

The judge said Harris had been in possession of some 40,000 images of child pornography.

Harris was charged by state police at Fern Ridge with rape of a child, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, aggravated indecent assault of a person less than 13 years old, indecent assault of a person less than 13 years of age, and corruption of minors on Jan. 1, 2009.

On Oct. 28, 2015, Harris waived his right to a preliminary hearing before former District Judge Edward Lewis of Jim Thorpe.

On April 18, 2017, he pleaded guilty to the assault charge. All of the remaining charges were dropped in the plea negotiations.

The child pornography case was investigated by the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General, which charged Harris with three counts of disseminating photos or films of child sex acts, 25 counts of child pornography, and one count of criminal use of a communication facility on Oct. 10, 2014.

Harris committed the crime between 2008 and 2009, when the victim was 8 years old. Harris was indicted by a federal grand jury in November 2015, shortly after agents and police discovered the child pornography on a computer used by Harris.

He was sentenced in U.S. District Court, Scranton, on April 11.

At his sentencing, Senior U.S. District Court Judge James M. Munley called Harris’ actions “monstrous.”

Harris’ arrest on the pornography charge was part of a sting operation coordinated by then-Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane.

All of the suspects thought they were communicating with 14-year-old boys, but the “boys” were actually agents.

The investigation was conducted by the Homeland Security Investigations, the Pennsylvania State Police, and the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Francis P. Sempa prosecuted the case.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.